Guerrillas loyal to former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and operating on Haiti's Central Plateau near the Dominican border ambushed the vehicle of two policemen near the town of Belladère on Feb. 16, killing one of them.

Patrick Samedi, a specially trained officer of Haiti's SWAT team, was shot to death when he and another policeman from the elite Company for Intervention to Maintain Order (CIMO) were returning to the Belladère police station at around 8 p.m.. Elite police forces are deployed at the rural post which was previously attacked by a band of former soldiers in July 2001 (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 20, 8/1/2001). Belladère abuts the area of Pernal, a stronghold of the Duvalierist guerillas.

The attack on the police vehicle appears to have been a carefully planned ambush. The CIMO officer returned fire and escaped into the woods, through which he managed to return to the Belladère station on foot.

"According to our investigations, the people who carried out this action are the same group of armed bandits operating in the Pernal area as part of the Motherless Army [Lame San Manman]" said police spokesman Jeannot François. He went on to charge the Motherless Army with numerous attacks, including the murder of Judge Christophe Lozama last November in Belladère and the jail break of two of his alleged murderers last December in Lascahobas, in which four policemen were killed (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 40, 12/18/2002). François also said the Motherless Army carried out "acts of destabilization" last week in Petit Goâve in which a pro-government activist was killed and another seriously burned (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 48, 2/12/2003) as well as the fatal shooting Feb. 6 on the airport road in Port-au-Prince of Irandal Pierre-Louis, a member of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide‚s security detail.

"There is a plot underway to assassinate the president," asserted Ronald Pierre-Louis, Irandal's brother, after the Feb. 14 funeral at the National Cathedral attended by Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and Justice Minister Calixte Delatour. "The forces of darkness are killing off people one by one; Belladère, Petit Goâve, and today was Irandal's turn... As we speak, there is another Presidential security agent in the hospital with 5 bullets in his chest."

Last week Haitian police units arrested six former soldiers near Belladère and charged them with armed attacks against the government and other crimes (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 48, 2/12/2003).

The very night of the latest attack, the police dispatched a second elite police unit to the Belladère/Pernal area. "We are now going to concentrate a maximum of forces and means to finish with this problem once and for all," François said.

Departing for a CARICOM conference in Trinidad on Jan. 15, Aristide commented on the Duvalierist guerilla offensive in strong terms, calling it "the armed branch of the opposition which has already spilled blood in various corners of the country."

Last week, Paul Denis, a spokesman for the Washington-backed Democratic Convergence opposition front denied reports that his coalition was linked to the Motherless Army, although he did not condemn the deadly attacks.



OAS Mission to Haiti Cancelled by Snow

A high-level delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS) was to have visited Haiti on Jan. 17, but it was cancelled due to the snowstorms which struck the U.S. East Coast and Washington, D.C. It is expected to be rescheduled soon.

The purpose of the visit is to "communicate the international community's firm conviction that all sides in Haiti should honor their obligations under Resolution 822 so as to end the climate of violence and insecurity," said delegation leaders, OAS assistant secretary general Luigi Einaudi and CARICOM's Julian Hunte, the St. Lucian Minister of External Affairs. "This visit is not designed to start new negotiations."

Res. 822, passed last September, calls on the Haitian government and the Washington-backed Democratic Convergence opposition front to make a series of concessions that would lead to the holding of new municipal and legislative elections later this year (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 26, 9/11/2002). The Haitian government has carried out most of its concessions, including the payment of reparations to opposition leaders for mob reprisals after the attempted assassination of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Dec. 17, 2001, while the Convergence has fulfilled none.

Among the other heavy-weight arm-twisters in the delegation will be Canadian Secretary of State for Latin America Denis Paradis, the Bahamian Foreign Minister Frederick Mitchell, and U.S. representative for "Continental Initiatives" Otto Reich. Representatives of the European Union and international lending institutions will be on hand as observers.

Convergence politicians are rubbing their hands in expectation that Washington will turn the screws ever tighter on the government run by Aristide's Lavalas Family party (FL). "The arrival of the international delegation will be an important moment of truth for everyone," said Convergence politician Micha Gaillard. "The Democratic Convergence will tell the international delegation about all the miseries that the Lavalas [government] has forced the population to endure. The Convergence will insist on the non-execution of the points of Resolution 822 concerning the creation of a democratic environment for the holding of true elections. In the end, the Convergence will reiterate its position, and that of millions of Haitians who want good elections, that Mr. Aristide's departure from power is necessary.»

While Gaillard will present an intransigent line, Rosny Desroches of the Civil Society Initiative, a Convergence-affiliated bourgeois pressure group, plans to ask for Washington's support with only slightly more nuance. «I hope that [the delegation] will apply enough pressure to convince the government to create the conditions that will allow the launching of the electoral process,» he said.

One can expect U.S. representatives, especially the arch-reactionary Otto Reich, to put heavy pressure on Haiti. But the Aristide government appears to have the sympathy, if not the support, of most CARICOM nations and of important OAS member states such as Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador. These latter nations, with progressive governments, face much of the same pressure and sabotage that Haiti is experiencing. Their populist leaders would not like the OAS to establish an interventionist precedents.

Recent diplomatic rebellions in NATO and the UN Security Council against Washington's pushiness for war in Iraq may also embolden Haiti's allies.

Meanwhile, opposition partisans, under the cover of some so-called unions, held a demonstration in the capital on Feb. 17. About thirty people, mostly the organizers themselves, marched through Port-au-Prince chanting slogans against Aristide under the vigilant eye of as many policemen.

At the Feb. 15 CARICOM Summit in Trinidad, President John Bertrand Aristide called on Haitians look to themselves, not foreign delegations, to break the country's political deadlock. "It is not CARICOM or the OAS that will resolve our problems," he said. "It is us, Haitians, that must compromise with each other to settle our differences with their accompaniment."